{"id":1212,"date":"2016-05-13T17:59:58","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T22:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=1212"},"modified":"2016-05-13T18:01:01","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T23:01:01","slug":"southwest-airlines-pilots-suing-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=1212","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Airlines pilots suing Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Southwest Airlines pilots<\/strong>\u00a0are suing Chicago over a billboard they claim was banned by the city at Midway Airport. City Hall\u00a0decided to\u00a0bar the\u00a0advertising that the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association wanted to post at the\u00a0airport complaining about their\u00a0lack of pay increases. In the suit, the pilots union is claiming that the\u00a0City of Chicago&#8217;s refusal to allow the\u00a0billboard at Midway Airport\u00a0is a violation of\u00a0their First Amendment rights of free speech under the constitution. The union wanted to get the billboard up prior to the\u00a0Southwest Airlines shareholders meeting to be held in Chicago on\u00a0May 18.\u00a0The City has stated that it\u00a0decided to ban the billboard due to new\u00a0guidelines that were issued\u00a0during the previous summer that\u00a0disallow\u00a0any and\u00a0all political or\u00a0public issue advertising at Chicago&#8217;s\u00a0Midway and O&#8217;Hare airports.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Southwest Airlines pilots argue for wage increases<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The advertisement that was denied showed Southwest Airlines\u00a0pilots holding a sign stating &#8220;Shareholder returns: $3.1 billion; Pilot raises: $0&#8221; along side the phrase\u00a0&#8220;The Pilots of SWAPA welcome Southwest shareholders to Chicago&#8221;. The city\u00a0rejected the advertisement twice, including a &#8220;slightly&#8221;\u00a0modified version of the phrase, according to the lawsuit.\u00a0The pilots union is seeking\u00a0a temporary restraining order that would allow\u00a0the billboard to be posted prior to the shareholder meeting. The pilots are angry, claiming that they have not had a raise since 2011. The last contract that the pilots union had expired in\u00a02012. The\u00a0pilots union had negotiated a\u00a0tentative agreement on\u00a0a new contract last year. That contract collapsed when it\u00a0was overwhelmingly rejected by the 8,300 members of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association last November.\u00a0The union elected a new president and selected a new negotiating committee following the rejection of the\u00a0tentative deal last year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1215\" src=\"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Southwest-Airlines-pilots-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Southwest Airlines pilots\" width=\"656\" height=\"492\" srcset=\"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Southwest-Airlines-pilots-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Southwest-Airlines-pilots-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Southwest-Airlines-pilots-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 656px) 100vw, 656px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Southwest Airlines pilots\u00a0are suing Chicago over a billboard they claim was banned by the city at Midway Airport. City Hall\u00a0decided to\u00a0bar the\u00a0advertising that the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association wanted to post at the\u00a0airport complaining about their\u00a0lack of pay increases. In the suit, the pilots union is claiming that the\u00a0City of Chicago&#8217;s refusal to allow the\u00a0billboard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[82,251,268,187,84,267],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation-news","tag-chicago","tag-midway-airport","tag-ohare-airport","tag-pilots","tag-southwest-airlines","tag-sue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1216,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions\/1216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}